KS Wild

The Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild for short) is an advocate for the forests, waters, and wildlife of the Klamath and Rogue River basins of southwest Oregon and northwest California. We use environmental law, science, collaboration, education, and grassroots organizing to defend healthy ecosystems and help build sustainable communities.

A $100 contribution pays for travel and expenses for our staff to spend a full day in the field, documenting timber sales or road inventory plans on public land. This grass-roots work fosters and strengthens connections between the people of Oregon and their wild, beautiful public land. Join us today!

How do volunteers make a difference for this organization?

Volunteers are a key part of KS Wild. Our RiverWatch program now has more than 20 individuals keeping an eye on stream and river segments throughout the Rogue Valley. Our Adopt-A-Botanical Area program has brought similar volunteer oversight to more than 65 rare botanical areas throughout the region. Volunteers also assist with outreach to other potential supporters through tabling, event support, and various tasks such as newsletter distribution, mailing parties, and letter writing. Call (541) 488-5789 to find out how you can volunteer.

ABOUT KS WILD:

Since our founding in 1997, the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center (KS Wild) has grown to become a significant regional force for conservation. Our goal is to protect roadless areas, old-growth forests, water quality, fish and wildlife habitat from unsustainable resource extraction and pollution. We aim to restore those areas that have been impaired by more than a century of mismanagement. From our humble, volunteer-led beginnings fighting old-growth logging out of a home office in Williams, Oregon, we have grown to a staff of nine who serve as leaders in conservation efforts across the region.

In 2009, we launched the Rogue Riverkeeper Program to better protect the public trust waters of the Rogue Basin and the world-class fishing and recreational boating opportunities that are so crucial to southern Oregon’s economy and quality of life.

KS Wild’s recent merger with the Siskiyou Project, a 23-year veteran of southern Oregon conservation advocacy, brings increased capacity and focus on the Siskiyou Wild Rivers area. Siskiyou Project staff and program have integrated under the KS Wild banner, and we are now working together to advance conservation goals across the region.

However, powerful interests continue to push for unsustainable resource extraction at the expense of these public lands, waters and wildlife. KS Wild plays a crucial role in influencing decision-makers to protect rather than exploit these vital wildlands. Key strategies include:

• Attain 1. Wilderness and Wild and Scenic River designations in the Lower Rogue River Basin, 2. Wild and Scenic River designation expansions and mining withdrawals for the Chetco River, and 3. A tenfold expansion of the Oregon Caves National Monument, the designation of the first underground Wild and Scenic River, and a livestock allotment retirement for unique botanical hotspots surrounding the existing Monument.

• Advance more substantive protections for the Siskiyou Crest, a phenomenally biodiverse 1-million-acre mountain landscape at the Oregon-California border and for the Siskiyou Wild Rivers, an equally diverse 1.5-million-acre forest and rivers landscape.

• Advocate for the removal of logging roads and ORV routes that fragment and degrade wildlife habitat or harm aquatic resources.

• Spur the reform of public lands mining policy at both federal and local levels.

• Advocate for the protection and recovery of at-risk species through both direct challenges and habitat protection.

• Protect and restore water quality and fish populations in the Rogue River Basin and adjacent coastal watersheds through enforcement, advocacy, field work and community action.

• Highlight the vital role that the forests of the Klamath-Siskiyou play in mitigating climate change.

KS Wild has an impressive track record as a conservation leader in the Pacific Northwest. Through successful collaboration with natural resource managers and other stakeholders, we are shifting a historically “boom-and-bust” economy of short-term exploitation of public resources toward a more sustainable restoration paradigm that benefits both the environment and our communities.

ABOUT YOU:KS Wild relies on a strong and active membership support to accomplish its goals. From volunteering with our RiverWatch and Adopt-A-Botanical Area programs to providing key financial support, KS Wild members are central to building a movement for regional conservation. Our members also receive bi-monthly action alerts, our quarterly newsletter: KS Wild News, and numerous opportunities to participate in events and land, water, and wildlife management decisions throughout the region.